Read Online Solo by Clyde Edgerton - Free Book Online Page B

for a student to walk out to an airplane without his helmet or without his parachute, do a preflight, look over the aircraft logs, start to climb into the aircraft, and then suddenly realize his mistake. The instructor never said a word. As long as a student wasn’t dangerous, he ate his mistake.
    About halfway through my T-37 training, Captain Dunning was assigned to a new student and I was assigned back to Captain Coleman—Mr. Big, my original T-37 instructor, who’d turned me over to Captain Dunning.
    Captain Coleman, I’d heard, was a screamer.
    On our third or fourth flight, I was flying an instrumentapproach. I became preoccupied with my altitude and got off my heading. Captain Coleman suddenly screamed, “
What the hell are you doing, Edgerton?
” He grabbed the hose to my oxygen mask and
squeezed it shut.
I couldn’t breathe. He let up, I breathed in, he squeezed it, I couldn’t breathe, and he screamed again, “
Can’t you hold a goddamn heading and altitude? Good God, Edgerton, where’d you learn to fly? The heading is one eight niner, not one eight six, and you’re supposed to be at twenty-one hundred feet. You’re two hundred feet low, Edgerton. Are you trying to get my ass killed?
”
    My “No, sir” was a “Humph-humph.”
    I’m glad Coleman wasn’t my instructor for spin recoveries.
    I asked my friend Cal Starnes, also one of Coleman’s students, “Has he got you yet?”
    “No way. You got to screw up, and I ain’t going to screw up.”
    A static wire ran from the bottom of the T-37 to the ground while the aircraft sat on the flight line. It reduced the chances of a fire during fueling. The pilot always manually released the wire before he got into the aircraft. One day, Cal overlooked the item on his preflight checklist. He and Coleman got into the plane and Cal started the engines. It was a big, strong wire, clamped to a reinforced grommet in the asphalt, and without its being released, the aircraft would not taxi. Far. Captain Coleman knew, of course, that Cal hadn’t released the grounding wire and had motioned for the crew chief, standing by, not to release it—to pretend nothing was wrong.
    Cal finished his preflight check, climbed into the aircraft, finished his pre-engine-start checklist and started the engines. He finished his before-taxi checklist and added power to taxi. The airplane moved a foot or so and stopped. Cal increased power. The airplane did not move. He increased power. The airplane did not move.
    Coleman reached over and clamped his hand around Cal’s oxygen hose. “
What the hell is wrong with you, Starnes? My God, man. Can’t you see the airplane is not moving? Can you possibly cut the damn power? What the hell is wrong with you? The airplane is tied to the ground wire, you dummy. Can’t you read a simple checklist? Shut down the engine, get out, and release the goddamn ground wire. What the hell’s wrong with you, Starnes? Look at your checklist and read how to shut down the damn engines. Now.
” Then he released the hose. Starnes gasped, got his vision back.
    A C OLONEL N ASH , from headquarters, was coming to my squadron to fly with a T-37 student pilot: me. The colonel arrived and we briefed for the mission. This was the highest-ranking officer I’d flown with, and I hoped to impress him.
    The preflight—like the preflight of the Cherokee 140—started at the cockpit on the left side and continued to the rear of the aircraft, along the right side, around the front, and back to the starting point. Colonel Nash followed me, watching. Items to check were not unlike those for the little Cherokee 140.
    Sheets of aluminum cover the T-37 and are held down with lines of Zeus fasteners (little screwlike devices). Onthe right side of the fuselage a Zeus fastener was loose. I told the crew chief so that with a little screwdriver-like device he could tighten it.
    After I’d completed the preflight and had climbed aboard to sit in the cockpit beside Colonel Nash,